Super Fake Love Song - David Yoon Page 0,85

and Dad hadn’t come down from their bedroom yet.

I let everyone sleep in.

I stood ready on my Velociraptor, feeling like a daredevil in my helmet and skid pads. I opened the garage. I felt like someone should know about this big thing I was heading off to do, and I couldn’t think of anyone to text.

Hey, I wrote Jamal.

Hey, I wrote Milo.

I waited five whole minutes. I knew they’d seen my messages because, like fools with a death wish, they kept their phones in their pockets at all times.

Neither Jamal nor Milo wrote back. They were mad, or pretending to be busy, or both. Today, I would make it up to them. I would fix things. I will try to fix you.

Six hexes upon you, Dad, for forcing Coldplay so deep into my head.

I glided out of the garage with telemark grace. I went slow down the hill. What could I possibly say to Cirrus? I did not know. The important part was to get there before I chickened out and went back to hide in my beautiful warm bed for the rest of my life.

Her condo looked unchanged. I absurdly wanted it to have morphed drastically, to reflect how I was feeling. But why should it? Why should anything?

I kicked my kickstand, marched up to the front door, and rang the bell. The doorbell stared back at me with its little impassive video eye. A moment passed. Then ten. I rang again. Did she see me?

I backed away, looked up at her window. The curtain twitched.

“Cirrus,” I called as quietly as I could, which was stupid because it was impossible to shout softly.

Nothing.

“I need to explain myself,” I said.

The window slid smoothly open four inches. Her hand emerged, flung a rose petal, and retreated to slam the glass shut again.

I scrambled for the petal.

It was not a petal.

It was a guitar pick.

My heart sank into my stomach to be digested and later excreted out as so much waste down the toilet and into the sewer system to eventually become invisible food for so many tiny ocean dwellers. I put the guitar pick in my pocket. I understood.

I would go put the guitar pick back in Gray’s room, where it belonged.

The ride back up the hill seemed to grow steeper and steeper with every lunge of my legs. When I reached Jamal’s, I cruised up the herringbone driveway, through the carriage house, across a sunlit atrium, and into the guest villa garage, which was open.

Jamal and Milo were there. They watched in silence as I kicked my kickstand and removed my helmet and skid pads.

“We just finished setup,” said Jamal. “Your services are not needed.”

Ouch. Critical hit.

“Maybe I could sing the narration?” I said. “Ha ha?”

Milo shook his head slowly. “Too soon.”

“I came to tell you I’m sorry,” I said. “For everything.”

“Is Gray sorry, too?” said Jamal.

“Actually, he is,” I said. “More than you might realize.”

Jamal and Milo looked at each other, then me.

Milo’s jaw was set tight. “Nn.”

“Well, the rest of high school should be very awkward from here on out,” said Jamal. He raised his eyebrows. “Track’s gonna be awkward. Lunch should be exceptionally awkward.”

A hundred seconds passed. I couldn’t think of a single thing I could say in that time.

“You said we were losers,” said Jamal.

I struggled. “I didn’t mean loser. I meant—”

“Sounded like loser to me,” said Jamal. “Milo?”

“Me too,” said Milo.

More silence. My mind was freezing to a halt.

“You know,” said Jamal, “I used to think that hey, worst-case scenario, we would make fools out of ourselves before our big fake band breakup. We’re used to being thought of as fools. I can do fools.”

I looked back at him. “I really didn’t think that things would—”

“I didn’t think we would wind up being hated,” said Jamal. “Loathed and despised. Oh no. That was unexpected.”

I shut up. I glanced at Milo. His eyes sat in a bar of LED light, unwavering.

“You realize the whole school knows what we did?” said Jamal.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m sorry I said—what I said.”

“So you are officially admitting you did in fact call us losers last night,” said Jamal.

“I am sorry I strongly implied you were losers by association, thereby effectively inflicting the same damage as if I had called you losers directly,” I said.

“That apology is wholly unsatisfying,” said Jamal. “I mean wholly.”

“I’ve been ashamed for a long time,” I said.

Jamal and Milo stopped what they were doing and stared.

Milo took a step. “Of what?”

“Of myself,” I said.

“That’s stupid,”